While staying in Bundanoon (a village south of Bowral in the Southern Highlands) I was impressed to discover they had voted out bottled water.

I was so encouraged by a small town achieving a victory like this against corporate giants. Bottled water is a lucrative product that I can hardly believe friends of mine who drink nothing else. And these are usually friends of mine who are environmentally conscious in many other respects!

We have been made fools of by beverage companies who added water to their menu. (We have been made fools of by the bottled beverage industry altogether, but water even more so.) Bottled water is enormously taxing on the environment. It is inordinately more expensive that from a tap. The health impact of plastic bottles on humans is sketchy at best. The health impact on animals and waterways is certainly less uncertain – bottles really damage the planet.

Beverage bottles must be one of the most prominent of the rubbish left on our streets today. Though they are readily recyclable, many bottles never make it to a plant due to litter, or carelessly put into regular rubbish bins for regular landfill collection. Bottles don’t belong back in the ground! Or out at sea!

Yet, even recycling is taxing on the environment (though less taxing than virgin materials, that is not my point here), so any reduction in the use of new bottled water is ideal.

To think that a small town stood up to beverage companies and declared their town to be free from bottled water is to me simply remarkable. The strength of this bold statement has caught media attention, and of course continued to bolster the case that bottled water (at least the commodity of convenience it has become) is damaging to the environment. Now schools, universities and some other regions have also declared no bottled water in their premises. I will watch with great interest to see how far this new awareness will reach. I commend the pioneering thinkers who made that vote in the town of Bundanoon.

(Image from bundyontap.com.au)